The semiconductor industry is rapidly decreasing the dimensions and increasing the density of electronic circuitry and electronic components in microelectronic devices, silicon chips, liquid crystal displays, MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems), printed wiring boards, and the like. The integrated circuits within them are being layered or stacked with constantly decreasing thicknesses of the insulating layer between each circuitry layer and smaller and smaller feature sizes. As the feature sizes have shrunk, patterns have become smaller, and device performance parameters tighter and more robust. As a result, various issues which heretofore could be tolerated, can no longer be tolerated or have become more of an issue due to the smaller feature size.
Metal layers (or metal films) are generally susceptible to corrosion. For example, metals or metal alloys such as aluminum, copper, aluminum-copper alloy, tungsten nitride, tungsten (W), cobalt (Co), titanium oxide, other metals and metal nitrides, will readily corrode and dielectrics [ILD, ULK] can etch by using conventional cleaning chemistries. In addition the amount of corrosion tolerated by the integrated circuit device manufacturers is getting smaller and smaller as the device geometries shrink.
At the same time as residues become harder to remove and corrosion must be controlled to ever lower levels, cleaning solutions must be safe to use and environmentally friendly.
Therefore, the cleaning solution should be effective for removing the plasma etch and plasma ash residues and must also be non-corrosive to all exposed substrate materials.